Chapter Text
The summer heat was excruciating in the small crowded room. If he didn't know any better, he'd think that somehow he was transported to hell instead of the Dursley's. Alas, he wasn't that lucky.
Home sweet home, Harry thinks, bitterly.
Harry wanted to believe that all the events leading to him being sent back to the Dursley's was a dream desperately. Actually, he felt like magic had just been introduced to him and Harry had been uncertain if it was real or not. Albeit the feeling was more positive than what he was feeling now.
The nightmare-turned-reality continuously plays at the front of his mind, acidic green light at the corner of his vision. The heavy thud of something, a body (a spare), falling onto the grass. The memory had sunk its claws into him and refused to let him forget a single detail of the horrid event.
Harry was partly sure that he was going mad, ever since the Hogwarts castle had left his sight and he was transported back to his horrid relatives in a daze. Each moment was harder to discern than the last until he couldn't ever tell you the difference.
Even as Harry leans against the old rusty closet, the void feeling doesn't leave. The absence of any real emotions worries him. None of the tears he wants start sliding down his face. Nothing happens. The build of tragedy kept safely somewhere he cannot reach.
Harry should have been crying. Bursting at the seams, perhaps. That's what normal people do when they see someone die, isn't it? (He wouldn't know, hes a freak, or whatever the Dursleys particularly want to call him that day) He saw it happen, no matter what other students, or the Ministry of Magic, say.
Voldemort is back, Cedric is dead, and Harry is supposed to be crying, yet he isn't.
Was he a horrible person? Would he turn out to be like Voldemort? Did he even care about the kind boy who once was his competitor? Or was it that Harry simply was never close enough to Cedric to be grieving?
Harry hoped that was the case, otherwise he doesn't know what he would do.
His mind turned to his classmates, the people he grew alongside ever since he turned eleven, envious of the ability to convince themselves that Voldemort wasn't back and that he was lying. If only he was lying.
"BOY!" His uncle bellowed, "Stop these freakish tricks at once and come downstairs!"
His eyes focus once more as they look up, the light's flickering finally coming to a stop. Harry did that. His magic, so frenzied and out of control, had interfered with the electricity of this god forsaken house. He wonders what else could happen. What damage his magic could cause.
Was it horrible of him, that a small part of him wanted it to happen. If only to have a sliver of proof that he wasn't some kind of attention-seeking brat that apparently half the school thought he was.
He twitches at what kinds of punishments that would lead to. Yeah, no. He deliberately moves his thoughts to anything else. He can't think like that, at least not until the summer is finished and he can go back to Hogwarts, his home.
Never mind. He was at the Dursley's now. Nothing could change that. Harry closes his eyes as the truth of that statement seeps into him.
He gets both feet under himself and stands wobbly, the headache residing in his head persisting. His shoulders are set before walking out of Dudley's second bedroom, the one thing accompanying him were the crescent moons on his palms that had been left by his nails.
No more thinking.
Standing at the top of the stairs, he hears Snape's voice. Snide and cruel, telling him 'it won't be such a difficult task for you, Potter."
When he reached the final steps, Aunt Petunia immediately sent him away to the garden, face scrunched up as if it pained her to see him. Like they hadn't just brought him downstairs. Harry sometimes still wonders if they don’t have an ounce of logical thought in their bodies or if they don’t see a reason to use logic when it comes to him. Probably the latter. Upon stepping outside, it's as if he can finally breathe again. At least a little bit. Harry sets to work while his hands go through all the motions he's familiar with by now, bugs buzz away near his ear.
Harry reckons that they are the only thing keeping him from completely going mental.
It should’ve been the opposite, and he won’t deny that they are extremely annoying, but he didn’t have much that was constant around him, other than his migraine. Flies and the like were the sole things that just won’t go away. The things that won’t, or can’t, be entirely eradicated. They just keep on living after being crushed under someone else's boots. Harry’s mouth ticks up, as he can clearly see the resemblance in his mind.
The Boy Who Just Won’t Die, akin to a cockroach.
‹ ⎙ ›
He tries to will something to happen with his magic. Anything.
Harry wishes he could have been like everyone else. Someone who had parents would be a great start. But he wishes to be even someone as common as the kids who run through the streets with wild abandon, while he swings aimlessly on a creaky swing in a deserted park.
He wishes he could think of his future the same as they do, their futures seeming like a distant thing. Future jobs and opportunities take vague shapes in their sights. Harry didn't ever have the leisure to hope for a different fate.
When he had been eleven, although that seems like such a distant memory, he had thought that in the wizarding world he wouldn't be such a irregularity but no. Each year they were intent on proving him wrong. Again, and again, and again.
He was still a freak when a possessed man was burned alive by his bare hands. He was a freak when people claimed he was the Heir of Slytherin simply because he could speak to snakes in Parseltongue. He was still a freak when Dementors affected him like no other. Harry was still a freak of nature when he was entered into a tournament meant for seventeen-year-old's, who cared if he was fourteen years old after all he was the Boy-Who-Lived. When he survived each task while the odds were faced against him. When Peter fucking Pettigrew appeared from wherever he had hid, the coward, and used his blood to resurrect Voldemort.
All he can see in his near future is a front seat view to the poisonous green curse being shot at him.
It jars him enough that his thoughts finally take a different direction. Harry misses his friends. Briefly he wonders if Ron will have his back this time. Would he believe the papers? They had barely sent him anything this year. Had they forgotten about him? While they stayed in the same place, which they had never disclosed together, did they think of him at all?
He missed Sirius and their talks.
Harry doesn't know if believing he has no friends, like the summer before second year, or being aware of the fact your friends will obey the adults no matter what costs it has, is worse.
He doesn't know if he could bare to see them after this summer, if they even want to see him. Maybe he won't be allowed to see anyone, that would spare him the decision. He already can't, trapped at the Dursley's as he is.
Harry sees Dudley's gang march on the sand of the playground, up to the swing set he sat on.
All the boys run. Dudley is the only one left.
Despair claws at him from the pits of his heart and he knows for certain that its Dementors.
He can hear his mother's voice. Echoing through under the archway he unconsciously walked to. Her screams and pleads not for herself but for him. He wishes he had met her, perhaps he will soon. He can't gather up the happiness to chase them away, not now. He will die before he can even get a job.
Dudley screams.
‹ ⎙ ›
The sole thing Harry can hear are his mother's screams on loop. Over and over again while the spiders in his cupboard crawl with their tiny eight legs around him. The moment he and Dudley had returned to Privet Drive, accompanied by Miss.Figg, Vernon had thrown him inside his cupboard. The obese man didn't yell at him or anything which he supposes he ought to be grateful for. Didn't say anything for that matter. Just turned the lock and threw away the key apparently.
They abandon him without a thought as the car starts rumbling into the distance until Harry can't hear much of it anymore.
When he blinks back into awareness, he notices that the spiders have started circling him. With his attention on them, they suddenly all halt. All of their beady little eyes have turned to him and he stares back unsure what to do with more than a dozen spiders around him. Apparently, doing nothing was the solution since they take their attention off of him and continue as if all this was completely normal.
Lily Evans screams, she doesn't stop. Why won't she stop?
Before the Third Task, she was the only one who Harry would connect to the horrifying green light illuminating the back of his eyelids. Cedric quickly joins her, too quickly.
He can only hear 'Kill the spare' hissed at the coward, now.
He wishes he couldn't remember anything at all. Maybe everyone would forget about him if he did. Maybe that would spare all the people who would die for him, because of him. Maybe then they'll finally be able to live without him mucking it all up.
Those thoughts, they linger like a stain he couldn't scrub out of his mind
He fits perfectly in the cupboard he thought he had outgrown.
‹ ⎙ ›
Ron snores. It's not a new development. Ron has always snored ever since he first met him. What Harry means to say is that it's one of the things that keep him awake, other than his own traitorous brain.
He stares aimlessly at the ceiling. He feels as though it should be concerning that he can hear his own blinks. It's not though. It's just another thing that keeps him from falling asleep, which would lead to screaming and waking the entire house up.
He got to see Remus. That's, good. Great actually. Even if the man had given him absolutely nothing, not even a way of communicating with him, last year. It's not as though Remus owes him anything as well. He was just friends with his parents and the Defense professor in Harry's third year. Plus, Harry is sure the man was busy with something. With the whole being a werewolf and whatever the Order does.
The Order his parents were a part of. The Order Harry has never known about. That's fine. Perfectly swell actually. It's always fine to let Harry out of decisions that, apparently, are about his life.
He got to see Sirius again. That's the best part of the fucked up series of events happening to him. He's staying with him just like Sirius promised in third year when Harry had hoped to leave the Dursleys. Even if it's only part of the summer, it will be the best summer Harry has ever had. He'll make sure of it.
Sure, the place is a bit of dump but apparently his friends, who have been here the entire summer, have started to work on making it less of a shithole during their stay at 12 Grimmauld Place.
After he had arrived, Hermione and Ron had talked to him for about three minutes and then they were called down for dinner. Since then, Hermione has already started to insist that they should start studying for their OWL's. Harry wasn't prepared to agree with him on the matter and yet he does.
He hardly remembers any rubbish from last year's lessons since he had other things to worry about but he feels that he should be prepared. The only way to be so is to actually know spells, although he suspects that the Defense professor will be just as bad as the past years. It's not as if he could rely on his fame to pass his lessons with everything The Daily Prophet says about him even if he wanted to, which he doesn't.
Besides, it will give him an excuse to ignore Ron and Hermione. Their voices have been grating him recently and he doesn't know when that happened. He doesn't know why it happened.
Sure, he felt justified in his anger when he was at the Dursley's but they're here now. Well, he's here. It's not as though they made him feel that way on purpose. They had orders, from Dumbledore. Harry had been so sure that he'd be able to forgive them as soon as they talked to him again but he just couldn't. His anger feels overflowing as if no one had bothered to turn the tap off. It fills him so that he doesn't know if he's able to feel anything else.
No matter. They can't bother him if he's already elbows deep into a book. Hermione certainly wouldn't stop him and neither would Ron. Ron might try, he is sure Hermione would prevent Ron though so that solves that particular cross road.
Again, his summer is looking great.
Although Snape is here, roaming around like the bat he is. He had heard the floo burn and the git's voice before Mrs. Weasley shooed them away to dinner.
His senses decide then and there to suddenly sharpen. He can hear an annoying high pitched screeching and it accentuates the feeling of his heavy lids. He blinks.
He can still hear himself blinking. The moisture in his eyes causes a sensation not unfamiliar to when a rain drop falls right onto your eyelashes.
He turns on his side, imagining how ridiculous it would have looked if Snape had been with them when they retrieved him from the Dursleys. If they would have still used brooms. Suppose the man could even ride a broom.
Harry might have lost it at the sight.
Truly, he would've just tipped a bit into madness had that had happened, if he hasn't already. Maybe tipped off his broom too.
Billowing robes and air rushing near his ears steer him to sleep.
Sleep, and nightmares.
‹ ⎙ ›
His plans to study are thwarted before Harry can even open a book.
Mrs.Weasley stands in front of all the teenagers with her hands on her hips before starting to give them instructions. “Throw any and all books away, every single one of them is Dark , ” She hisses the word as if she could get infected if she said it any more than she had to, “Any artifact needs to be put in this pile.” The mother pointed to the pile on her left before she continued to explain.
“Most of them are jinxed, so be careful around them. Avoid letting them touch your skin too much. Sirius, the fool, once got boils for touching one,” she comments offhandedly, and Harry blinks in shock at the blatant insult to Sirius, his godfather. He's a little offended, for Sirius. Besides, shouldn’t Mrs. Weasley be more worried about her children touching dangerous artifacts? Harry eyes if that sets any reaction off but everyone acts as if it's normal. Perhaps it is. It's not as if Harry had been there when they had arrived at his godfather's home.
He burns those thoughts of doubt away before they can spread further. He’s sure that Mrs. Weasley cares, she’s so nice that Harry can't doubt her anyway. Maybe the jinxes aren’t that bad.
He gets to work and avoids touching anything at all. Mostly he just pulls his sleeves above his fingers before grabbing stuff and then carefully putting the artifacts on the slowly growing pile.
A couple of artifacts put away later, Harry’s eyes get caught on a book in a corner no one’s reached yet. He shuffles over there, trying to get a good look at the title. Then he decided to fuck it and Harry shoves it underneath his sweater and tucks it in his waistband. Which, somehow doesn't make Harry's stomach look bulging. He spends a moment contemplating if he should be put off by that or not, but then carries on. He has to wait until lunch before he can go up to Ron and his shared room.
Mrs.Weasley tries to stop him, insisting he must have lunch with them, but Harry just looks at her before she sighs and shuffles away from the stairs. Once he's upstairs, Harry slides his trunk out from underneath his bed, takes the book out of his sweater, and wraps it in his invisibility cloak, and makes sure that nothing of the leather binding peaks out. It still feels so exposed. Harry tries to remember any protection spells other than 'Protego'. He wards the book with wards Hermione had once talked about until he feels it's enough protection that even the twins would have some trouble. Even then he makes sure he buries it underneath his small amount of belongings.
While he's upstairs, Harry reminds himself to get a book to study. He snatches up one of the books from last year, it being Potions with his luck, before going back downstairs to sit by the fireplace and read. Hermione gives him an approving look before turning back to argue with Ron some more. Honestly do they never get tired of it?
At night, he could finally read it. When he looks at a book title, carved into to cover as it is, 'Curse and Hexes to Defend Oneself’, he decides to keep it.
The next day, he felt as if there was a sign blaring 'I stole something' hovering over his head. Maybe not though since no one had said anything. It becomes somewhat of a routine. Each night. He reads and learns until his eyes start crusting together. Then, he goes to sleep for a couple of hours peacefully before being woken up by Ron or the twins.
He finishes the book, re-reads it, and then goes back to some of the chapters that he didn’t quite understand until he can practically recite the book word for word. For a moment Harry wonders if he should- No, he mentally stops himself from going down that trail.
This was a one-time thing, although he can feel that he has no true reason why he shouldn’t do it.
‹ ⎙ ›
Harry distracts himself by studying. Before he knows it he’s run out of books to read. He considers asking Hermione about lending him a book but decides that he still hasn’t forgiven them. Even if Harry had forgiven them, he’s too angry and restless that he’d end up exploding at them either way. Harry asked Sirius if there was anywhere private for him to go. His godfather had looked at him for a moment, his bouncing leg, and his fidgeting hands, before leading him to a small opening of a non-descriptive door for it to show a big dueling room.
Harry still doesn’t know what in his expression gave him away.
The man had told him the room was soundproofed when he had asked before he quietly left. Harry decided it wasn’t worth the effort to explain why he needed the room. Let Sirius make his own conclusions on why. Harry hadn’t been able make use of it though, since for all the curses in the book, one needed to mean it. Like Fake-Moody had said in his brief stint as their teacher.
Harry wasn't quite sure he liked the implications in that.
The perfect time to practice those curses came quicker than expected.
The Order members had all gathered around the dining table once more, a replica of the meeting that he had walked into when he first got here. When Harry had been told he wasn’t even allowed to know what was happening by the 'responsible' adults, well. The dueling room was the first thing that came to mind
It didn't make it any better that the last time he had gotten a glimpse of the Prophet was that people still didn't believe Voldemort was back. Of course as soon as the front page had been in Molly Wesley's sight, she had cancelled their subscription.
Now, absolutely surrounded by all the adults, Harry refused to have a tantrum.
He walked away. Through the corridors and into the room. His wand slipped from underneath his sleeve and Harry had shot the first spell that popped into his mind before he even knew what he was doing. The dummy immediately curled into itself. Harry imagines that was a real person. Their ribs probably would have caved into itself, and stabbed the person in the heart.
At least now, Harry knows that he probably shouldn’t use that on a person. The dummy crumples into itself even more, proving his point. Definitely not on a person.
Apparently, he had been holding onto that anger for a while because he didn’t stop shooting curses left and right until Sirius came in. The amount of time that had passed in that room had felt like minutes. The list in his mind had slowly grown as he determined which one was relatively safe to use on people and what curses weren't.
The doors swung open. The man gave Harry a knowing look as if he knew him. That suddenly fanned the flames of his anger once again
This time, though, the fire made itself home in it heart like a dragon curling around his heart and Harry couldn’t get rid of it so easily.
He couldn't even keep himself holed up in the shared room since he still had to seem mature. As if he hadn't already proven that he's bloody mature every time they throw him back to the Dursley's.
‹ ⎙ ›
Harry had completely forgotten that he was supposed to have a hearing until Mr. Weasley had asked him if he had any robes and Sirius had piped in that he could borrow his. The entire walk to the Ministry seemed like it would last forever, as Mr. Weasley had started ranting about Muggles and rubber duckies and whatnot. By the time they had gotten there, he had gotten an awful headache.
He let the man guide him through the dark walls of the Ministry that seemed to go on forever. The lift opened up. The cramped space felt suffocating.
His headache only got worse during the hearing. When Harry entered the Courtroom, he realized that apparently, this wasn't just a normal disciplinary hearing. The way Hermione had muttered on about it in the last few days made it seem like it was just a few people giving him a slap on the wrist. Now it seemed like the entire Wizengamot was here. Way to make an exception for the Boy-Who-Lived. Or the Boy-Who-"Lied", as they had named him in the papers.
As the trial -since it obviously wasn't a hearing- proceeded, Harry got more annoyed. They wouldn't let him defend himself, a toad of a woman dressed in an outrageous amount of pink was speaking, and they were apparently determined to remove him from Hogwarts. His home. That was when Dumbledore swept in like the dramatic old sod he was. When he was finally cleared, although he almost wasn't, Dumbledore ignored him as if he was nothing.
Harry couldn't really make himself care yet, though he was sure the anger would kick in eventually. He was just glad that he wasn't expelled.
When they went back to the Burrow, they went through the floo. Thank god.
So much for a nice summer.
Honestly Harry was getting pretty tired of all the bloody adults thinking him stupid. Did they think of him as a toddler, since it certainly seems that way to him.
Whatever. He storms upstairs to Ron and his shared room.